MUMBAI: A holiday judge in the sessions court on Monday declined anticipatory bail at this stage to trader Ketan Shah in a hate speech case filed against him by a Samajwadi Party worker Sarfaraz Malik with the RAK Marg police station in Sewri for alleged tweets and posts on social media by him, said a lawyer. The posts were allegedly derogatory to Islam the FIR registered last Saturday had said.

Shah, an investor who has been fighting against NSEL and FTIL for himself and on behalf of 13,000 investors who lost money, moved for pre-arrest bail. But after hearing advocate Tariq Khan who appeared for the complainant Malik, as an intervener to oppose the anticipatory bail plea, the court declined Shah any immediate relief at this stage.

“The court after hearing the submissions and seeing the documents we produced containing the alleged derogatory material did not consider it fit to grant the benefit of granting anticipatory bail to Shah at this stage.” Shah’s lawyer argued that this was not a case for arrest and that the alleged posts were general in nature and never meant to hurt any one’s or any community’s religious sentiments or feelings. The police had registered the FIR against Shan under sections 295 (A) and 153 (A) of Indian Penal Code for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of the Islamic community and had also invoked section 67 of the Information Technology Act.

Shah had said that he that he had “done nothing with any intention to hurt any religious sentiments.” “It must be motivated since I am fighting on behalf of 13000 investors against FTIL”.

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